If you’re a writer, editor, blogger, or just someone interested in writing in excruciatingly correct English, you might have occasion to refer to a style guide. A style guide can be an internal company document or a public publication, like the Associated Press Stylebook. Many media companies use the AP guide as the definitive source of spelling, capitalization, word choice, and the like. But not Yahoo News, apparently.

According to AP style, cabinet should be capitalized when referring to the president’s advisers, and not to a piece of furniture. (Other authorities, such as the Government Printing Office and the New York Times, recommend capitalizing the word in that context.) But ultimately it’s a matter of house style. So, I’ll give that one a pass.

Not getting a pass? The use of him instead of the reflexive pronoun himself. (When the subject and the pronoun refer to the same person, use a reflexive pronoun, which ends with self or selves.) And obviously, the doubled and in and and.

The writer and editor of this excerpt from Yahoo! Style probably think they know when to capitalize a word:

In this case, they would be wrong. When referring to the United States, States is a proper noun. (So, if you live in Australia and want to visit three states, you have to travel to the States.) They probably also think they know the title of that TV show called “So You Think You Can Dance.” They’re almost right: There is no question mark in the title.

If a major Internet news site like Yahoo! News writes a headline about someone it calls Greg Allman, is it fake news?

The editors haven’t just misspelled Gregg Allman’s name; they’ve overcapitalized or undercapitalized the name of his band. It seems they just can’t decide if it was the Allman Brothers Band of The Allman Brothers Band.

Like this:

Some trademarks are so common in English that they have become common nouns. But Scotch tape isn’t one of them. The Yahoo! Style writer should have capitalized Scotch or referred to the sticky stuff as cellophane tape:

Like this:

I tried reading an article on Yahoo! Style, but I just can’t force myself to read beyond the first paragraph. It is so stunningly awful in its grammatical mistakes and ignorance of basic English, that I gave up. Here’s what I found with just a cursory examination of the ‘graph; I’m sure I missed a few things that merit attention:

My experience tells me that this writer is not a native English-speaker. Her mistakes are ones that are common with people who did not grow up speaking and writing English. But there’s no excuse for not providing her with a competent editor, if only to save her from embarrassments like these:

18 years old should be 18-year-old. He is 18 years old, but he is an 18-year-old model.

instagram follower should be Instagram followers.

on first name term seems to be a bastardization of on a first name basis.

to loose his cherries for the first time is not just a vulgar expression, it’s kind of a stupid metaphor. First, she means lose, not loose. And one can only lose one’s cherry (which is singular) once. So I’m really confused as to what this is purported to mean. Maybe it just means the writer is both careless and ignorant.

There’s a missing the in at Coachella music festival.

will also be is redundant when one ends a sentence with too.

been to famous music festival needs a the.

I’m sure I missed something, and I didn’t even touch on the run-on sentences. Please, Yahoo!, get this gal an editor!

Maybe the writer for Yahoo! Style is dealing with a funky keyboard with an occasionally inoperable Shift key and a space bar that’s kinda jacked:

Just in case the writer actually made these mistakes intentionally, let’s school her: Big Bird and Cookie Monster are Muppets deserving of being treated as proper nouns. And manmade is one word according to the American Heritage Dictionary, though it allows the hyphenated man-made.